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Chapter 8: I Say, Rejoice!

The first question:

Osho,What is your message?

My message is very simple: Live life as dangerously as possible. Live life totally, intensely, passionately, because except for life there is no other god.

Friedrich Nietzsche says, “God is dead.” That is wrong because God has never been there in the first place. How can he be dead? Life is, always has been, will always be. Allow yourself.and I repeat again, allow yourself to be possessed by life.

The so-called religions of the past have been telling you just the opposite. They say, “Renounce,” I say, “Rejoice.” They negate life, I affirm it. They say life is something wrong, illusory, and they create an abstract idea of God which is nothing but a projection of their own minds. And they worship that projection. It is so unintelligent, so utterly stupid that one wonders how millions of people have believed in such sheer nonsense. That which is, is denied for that which is only an abstraction of the mind. God is only a word, but they say God is real. And life is a reality! You feel it in your heartbeat, it pulsates in your blood, it is all over the place - in the flowers, in the rivers, in the stars. And they say this is all maya, all illusion. They say that it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. And they create a God.and of course, everybody creates a god in his own image, so there have been thousands of gods.

It is your imagination. You can make a god with four heads, you can make a god with a thousand hands. It is up to you, it is your game. And these people have been telling and poisoning the minds of others. They say, “Brahma satya” “God is true,” and “Jagat mitya” “The world, life is untrue.”

I say to you, life is the only truth there is. There is no other god than life. So allow yourself to be possessed by life in all its forms, colors, dimensions - the whole rainbow, all the notes of music. If you can manage this simple thing.. It is simple because it is only a question of let-go. Don’t push the river, let the river take you to the ocean. It is already on the way. Relax, don’t be tense and don’t try to be spiritual. Don’t create any division between the matter and the spirit. Existence is one, matter and spirit are simply two sides of the same coin. Relax, rest, and go with the river.

Be a gambler, don’t be a businessman, and you will know more of godliness because the gambler can risk. The gambler is non-calculative, he can put all that he has at stake. But the thrill of the gambler when he stakes everything and waits.what is going to happen now? In that very moment a window can open. That very moment can become a transformation of the inner gestalt.